WASHINGTON – A Hindu clergyman made history Thursday by offering the Senate’s morning prayer, but only after police officers removed three shouting protesters from the visitors’ gallery.

Rajan Zed, director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., gave the brief prayer that opens each day’s Senate session. As he stood at the chamber’s podium in a bright orange and burgundy robe, two women and a man began shouting “this is an abomination” and other complaints from the gallery.

Police officers quickly arrested them and charged them disrupting Congress, a misdemeanor. The male protester told an AP reporter, “we are Christians and patriots” before police handcuffed them and led them away.

You’ve probably seen this photo of Pooja Chauhan and the news video by now:

If you haven’t, from the Times of India:

RAJKOT: Conservative Rajkot went into convulsions on Wednesday when alleged mental and physical abuse by her husband’s family drove a 22-year-old woman to strip to her underwear and walk through the city in protest.

Pooja Chauhan said she had taken to this unique protest after being constantly harassed for not bringing dowry and bearing a girl-child.

The effect was immediate. The police arrested her husband Pratapsinh Chauhan, parents-in-law and neighbours Veji Bharwad and Vinu Dalit on Wednesday, after she threatened to scale up her protest and march nude to the police commissioner’s office if she did not get justice.

“The arrests were made on the basis of Pooja Chauhan’s complaint. We are also planning to take action against Pooja for indecent behaviour in a public place. However, we will examine her mental condition before taking any action,” said Rajkot police commissioner K Nityanandam.

Fellas, I gotta tell you, this is pretty damm terrific. And spooky songstress Natasha Khan is hawt. She is incidentally related to the squash playing Pakistani family. Check out their site http://www.batforlashes.co.uk/

So I found another amazing video made by the same director, one Dougal Wilson, for Jarvis Cocker:

The song was performed by Leah Kauffman , a 21-year-old undergraduate at Temple University in Philadelphia, who wrote the lyrics with a friend, 32-year-old advertising executive Ben Relles, and the music with her producer, Rick Friedrich.

An actress/model named Amber Lee Ettinger then lip-synched the song for the video, shot by filmmakers found on Craigslist two hours before Relles and Ettinger hit New York City one Friday in May to shoot the video on a DV camera.

“Not including the hours we spent working on it, it probably cost a couple thousand dollars,” said Relles, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, who said he did it for fun, not money, but is also selling “Obamagirl” and “I Got a Crush on Obama” T-shirts.

Kid you not. From wired.com — “Jennifer Chowdhury attended the interactive telecommunications program at New York University, where her prototypes drew on her engineering training, her artistic aspirations and her sense of humor. Her master’s thesis project, Intimate Controllers, is not explicitly sexual — but it’s not something you would use with your sibling, either. ”

… “”I thought long and hard about how to present Intimate Controllers so it wouldn’t be viewed as ‘girls gone wild’ + technology,” she said in an e-mail. “It’s nerve-racking enough to give your thesis talk. But imagine doing it and knowing your teachers and peers are about to see you in your underwear on screen.”